The Best Tech Tools, Apps & Gear

Although this is a list of my digital toolbox, we start with some physical items. We do live in the real world after all! Here is a list of computers, smartphones, gadgets, coffee and other stuff.

Dell Studio 1749 Laptop (17″) with Windows 10. Getting a bit old now (nearly 6 years) but it has served me well.we considering buying a Macbook pro when the next one comes out, but if you are looking for a decent PC, definitely recommend Dells.

Social Media Management Tools

Social Media Management Tools try and help you with all aspects of managing social media accounts – not just publishing/scheduling, but help with engagement, reporting and analytics. we included TweetDeck in this list mainly because it allows to manage multiple Twitter accounts. use TweetChat occasionally to help with Twitter Chats.

Follower Management & Community

Growing your audience and followers takes time and effort. we don’t believe in buying followers! we use the following tools to help me segment my followers or find new targeted people who are likely to engage with me.

Alerts & Monitoring

Sometimes you want to be alerted when someone links to you or mentions you or there is a potential issue you need to deal with. Perhaps it is a new opportunity. use the following tools to help with this.

Marketing Software

Attracting new leads, helping with managing list and sending newsletters out, creating surveys, free videos and lead generation tools are all important in my marketing process. use the following tools as part of this:

Project Management

Research, Content Marketing & Amplification

The world of social media, marketing and technology is very fast moving and it’s very difficult to keep up. Using tools to help to find and contain the latest articles is so useful. Also use tools to help with my blogging process, taking notes, doing research and to help with amplification of my blog posts.

Images & Design

Security

Using strong passwords as well as managing them effectively and storing them securely is vital. we also use a Virtual Private Network service if we ever find having to use a public WiFi hotspot- so that my connection and data is secure.

Browser Extensions

Where would we be without browser extensions. The following are for Google Chrome, but most are also available for Firefox.

Awesome Screenshot – The best screenshot extension found. You can take a screenshot of the visible browser screen or the entire page. You can also take a shot of a selectable area and take a delayed screenshot. Once taken, you can add text, arrows and other callouts.

Video Speed Controller (although you can speed up YouTube videos, you can’t normally speed up videos on Wistia, Vimeo and other videos. This extension allows you to speed up any HTML5 video so that you can get through more content)

What Font – like a font on a web page? This extension shows you which font was used on elements on a web page.

uBlock Origin – great believer in supporting content providers. Unfortunately ads can get out of hand, and seen some malicious ads try and infect my machine. uBlock Origin is an Ad Block on steroids and can speed up your browsing significantly.

The Great Suspender – I love the Chrome browser, but it can get very slow, especially if you have a lot of tabs open. This extension suspens tabs after a period of time. You can reload tabs easily and even add certain websites to a whitelist so they never get suspended.

gorgias – smart email templates for GMail. GMail does have canned responses, but gorgias allows you to organise into a library. It can paste in first names and other smart data and you can use keyboard shortcuts.